Sunday August 20, 2000
News Item: IBF President Bob Lee Found guilty of laundering money
he received in bribes, and also of failing to claim said money on
his income tax return. But is found innocent of ever receiving
said bribes in the first place.
If this previous sentence makes no sense, now
you understand the sham the
judicial system has become in the United States of America.
On the surface it seemed like a slam dunk
for the federal prosecution based in Newark, New Jersey. A long
line of witnesses, including promoters, Bob Arum, Cedrick Kushner
and Dino Duva, testified they paid bribes to IBF President Bob Lee
though his intermediary Doug Beavers, who was the prosecution’s
star witness. The jury even saw a videotape of Beavers taking a
wad of cash, big enough to choke Rosie O’Donnell, out of his
sock in a hotel room and handing said cash to Lee. What did the
jury think the money was for?
Boxing gloves for the fighters? Styling gel for Don King?
The evidence was overwhelming. And Lee’s
entire defense was the identical defense used by a killer named O.
J. Simpson, namely, “The big, bad racist government is out
to get me because I’m an African-American in the lily white
world of the United States of America, so help me Louis
Farrakhan.” And a jury of 12 nincompoops bought this rubbish,
hook, line and Judge Ito too.
This Federal jury of disgrace deliberated 15
days before finding Lee innocent on all but six of the 33 felony
charges he faced, including racketeering. The jurors said they
placed little faith in 22 days of testimony by Beavers, the former
IBF ratings chairman who secretly recorded Lee for 18 months to
prove he took bribes to rig ratings of boxers.
"I didn't believe him 100
percent," said juror Donald Miller.
Well, how about 95 percent, you moron.
Wouldn’t 50 percent even be enough to convict a thief like Lee?
You saw the freaking pictures of Lee accepting bribes, didn’t
you? Or did you forget?
These same jurors also didn't believe
Beavers when he said he went to a New Jersey Turnpike rest stop to
give bribery money to Bob Lee's son, Robert Jr., to split with his
iniquitous old man. The younger Lee, a chip off the old felon, was
amazingly acquitted of all charges prosecutors brought against
him.
There’s a real good chance Lee junior is a
black man too.
"We don't believe it happened,"
jury foreman Gerard A. Brand said about the turnpike meeting.
Brand said he thinks Beavers kept the cash and placed it in a
"strongbox."
So now we have jurors concocting alternative
stories to what people may or may have not done, than using these
imaginary tales to acquit obvious outlaws.
Jurors also rejected the testimony of
manager Stan Hoffman, who said he had to ok $100,000 from promoter
Bob Arum to give Lee to sanction a title fight between George
Foreman and Axel Schulz. Hoffman said he paid Lee $96,000 of the
$100,000 over a period of several months. "We just didn't
know what happened with the money," said juror Maurice
Glasser. Another dodo bird of 12.
And here’s the kicker. The jurors said
that although they believe bribery payoffs occurred, they could
not convict Lee of racketeering under the New Jersey commercial
bribery statute because much of the graft took place outside the
state.
So these nutso jurors concluded Lee took
bribery payments, laundered the cash and failed to claim it on his
freaking income tax return, but is INNOCENT of taking the bribery
payments in the first place, because all these shenanigans took
place in another state?
Was this not a Federal trial, you bumbling
blockheads?
And who was the judge who charged the jury
before deliberations? Judge Crater? Norm Crosby? Marcel Marceau?
If you readers out there think this sham of
a trial only affects the sordid world of boxing and not the
rest of the American population, I’d like to sell you
condominiums on the moon.
The message here is simple. If you have
enough money, even money paid to you in illegal bribes, you can
hire lawyers more competent than the legal eagles who work for the
government, which is about 99 percent of the judicial population
on earth. Face it people, if the government lawyers had any genius
for the law, or talent for trials, they’d be working in the
private sector and making millions, instead of mooching peanuts on
the public dole.
In boxing, it’s back to
business as usual. Crooks like King and Arum will continue to
manipulated the boxing masses. But the IBF extortion trail in
Newark, New Jersey last week puts John Q. Public on notice.
If you want a honest trial, tune into Judge Judy.
And pray to God you don’t get wrongly
arrested, with a bank book the size of Don King’s conscience,
forcing you to spend a good portion of the rest of your life
incarcerated, with a cell mate who believes in tough love through
intense pain.
Hurts even to think about it.
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